


Rusting

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Poisoning, Angst, Coming Out, Depression, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hospitals, Loads of Angst, M/M, Other, Thoughts and mentions of suicide, Use of Alcohol As a Coping Instrument, low self worth, memories of hell, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 00:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2561969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has moved out. After realizing that Dean would be better in the hands of his angel, the trio was split, and while Sam keeps hunting, Dean and Cas have a steadily going domestic life in their cabin near Bobby's. The pain from Dean's time in Hell seems to be wearing off, and depression is no longer a major concern. Right? At least that's what Cas thinks. Meanwhile, Dean is dying inside and the hole in his soul has been spreading like the hell fire he was once engulfed in. Everything hurts, and words like knives have been hurled at hearts till neither Dean nor Cas knows what to do with each other. They love each other, but love can't build a soul again. Cas tries his best to save Dean from falling into the pit inside himself. But how much can a lone angel do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This story was started with the intention of being a one-shot fluff story and spiraled into this emotional mess. Apologies. Our wonderful artist, Jay, is at nonexistenz.tumblr.com.  
> Thanks for reading!  
> (View the art for this story [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2421203))  
> [PS- they aren't relevant, but see how many Welcome to Night Vale references you can find in here. I seemed to have put a lot of them into this piece.]

     Dean’s sitting at his table, sipping beer and reading a familiar magazine, none other than the most recent “Busty Asian Beauties”. At the moment, he’s seeming satisfied, and in showing it, he smiles widely in between every sip of beer he drinks, savoring the moment.  He takes a moment to remember how he got here.

     It’s quiet in the room, and it takes Dean a little while to remember that most of the silence is because of Sam moved out a few months ago, but of course this was after the realization that his brother and his angel were going to be a lot more intimate than they had been before. After some unspoken agreement, the trio of “Team Free Will” had started to split up during the long motel nights, separating into two rooms in their nightly motel stays. Sam would sleep in one room, Dean and Cas in the other. Sure, it was a little awkward in the beginning, especially for Sam (who was beginning to contract the symptoms of the “third wheel disease”), but he noticed that the subtle changes of intimacy going on in the Dean/Cas relationship looked like they were doing wonders for Dean’s self-worth and happiness (you could tell by how much more he smiled). Also, there was the subtle hand-holding (like Sam couldn’t see), the lingering glances on eyes and lips, the time spent alone in their bedroom, just having quiet talks (mostly), and it truly made Sam feel a bit better knowing that his brother’s heart was finally healing from his time in hell. Even though that was great news, it still didn’t excuse the obscene noises that occasionally traveled to Sam’s unfortunate ears. Even getting the two of them separate rooms didn’t always help. Yes, he could still hear them at it- you know, doing stuff that made him shudder just think about while they made noises that penetrated through the cheap flimsy walls. The frick frack, if you still don't understand.

     Several weeks and a few awkward talks later, Sam made the independent decision to split up with his brother (and Cas). Still working as a hunter, but less attached; away from the unavoidable family bonds that came with traveling and hunting with his big brother. Although it wasn’t the happiest decision he had ever made, Sam knew that his brother was in safe hands. Plus, it left Sam in a position where he was free to get a slice of domesticity for himself. Maybe he would get a puppy (or ten). Who knows? Either way, it still took him a bit of time to adjust to life without Dean, but now Dean had Castiel to patch up his heart and increase his self worth. Dean was still a little broken on the inside but he did feel a little more free to express himself and his feelings without having to put on a tough outer shell for Sammy. Castiel was always the most sympathetic of their little group, and now he was using that (however small) experience he had with independent emotions to heal the hurt inside Dean.

     Dean seems to forget that Cas had been in Hell with Dean too when rescuing him from the deeds he’d been doing. He’d smelled the stench of waste, and tasted the metallic tang of blood in the air, and felt the heat of thousands of infected bodies cursed to regenerate their forms only to come back to a newer, more inventive way of suffering till the end of their current life. Of course, Cas hadn’t been the subject of any of the torment himself, but he could almost imagine how it had been. He could almost empathize with all those upon the rack- being forced to go along with a certain treatment along with so many others, while an unknown force has taken the reigns while everyone is going along with it all for an infinity within a small amount of time. It was almost exactly how he felt about Heaven, but perhaps less painful. He wasn't keen on experiencing those feelings again.  

     It doesn’t matter if you’re pulling yourself from your misery or if someone else saves you from it all, either way- you get out. Cas got pulled himself out of his own personal hell by Dean and Dean got raised by Cas from the actual hell. Either way, they saved each other. It was all stupidly self-sacrificial, but in the world of the Winchesters, it’s their way of showing love. It was meant to be from Day One.

     It’s been months since they found their rhythm together. Just Dean and Cas, traveling around the world by Impala and angel wings, hunting when they weren't doing... other things. Dean didn't feel strange about this angel. They were the best of friends. Actually, a little more and a lot better than just friends, and if Dean were a bit more feminine, he might have said that they were more like soul mates. They almost seemed made for each other, like two adjacent pieces in the big and confusing puzzle called life. They had finally found their opposite halves.

     Dean would always feel the tiniest bit more giddy when he looked into Castiel's almost unnaturally blue eyes, and similarly, Cas always got a spark of happiness when his eyes met the candy apple green eyes of his other half. Cas was quite fond of Dean as Dean was quite fond of Dean. Basically, they both had turned into giant saps but neither of them seemed to notice (or care). Their relationship had grown and extended exponentially since the first time they had met. It was really amazing to witness two beings who were never expecting domesticity for themselves finding themselves in love with the other and having another love them as an actual lover. The joy from love is hard not to be surrounded in.

     After Dean had realized that Castiel wasn't nearly as accustomed to casual physical contact as the two brothers, and after they realized that they could potentially have a thing for each other, Dean decided to take the initiative to make the first move. It started with lingering hand touches when Dean taught Cas how to shake hands correctly, in which Castiel either played a limp fish or a hand crusher, resulting in Dean almost having to be hospitalized once when Cas had gripped his hand too hard. Every hold he tried had the strength to raise a soul from the deepest depths of Hell- oh wait.

     Dean continued his noble mission in getting Cas used to touches by gently hugging him from behind with both hands around Cas's waist. Of course, that was when Sam wasn't around. Cas was surprised at first but gradually evolved into an angel who would hold your hand or try to hug you back awkwardly from the back. Dean thought all this was adorable (not that he let either Sam or Cas see). Everybody seemed to be smiling a lot more.

     Sam had seen these changes too before his departure. He didn't mind that Dean wasn’t straight (or whatever the hell being in love with an angel happens to be classified as), mostly because he’d always known that something of that extent was true with his brother for a long time now. Somehow being with an angel didn't really count as being preferential to either sex though. Dean always had more of a fondness of women than men, but Castiel was something different altogether. He's an angel, and his external appearance was only a small part of what made Dean so enamored with Castiel. So, Dean saw it differently. Even though Castiel has always taken the (grudgingly attractive) male vessel of Jimmy Novak, Dean didn't care. He just wanted Cas. Cas just wanted Dean. It is and always has been a mutual love for each other.

     Most days, whenever they aren’t going to fun places, the couple lived a pretty quiet life in a small but comfortable cabin in the woods of South Dakota an hour or two away from Bobby’s, having themselves a (warded) domestic paradise, living on things that Cas brought back from his occasional flights around the earth that likened to international shopping trips. Dean had finally found a reason to settle down, and it didn't seem like anything would be changing that anytime soon. They even had a home base! At long last, a place to settle down, now affectionately nicknamed "The Hut.”

     Since he doesn't need sleep, Castiel occupies the dark hours of the night (when he isn’t secretly being cuddled by Dean) in search of little odds and ends to make their life together better. These included: a bumblebee statue that Cas, for some reason insisted on remaining in the main room, or a stray kitten (obviously brought home by Cas) that only got to stay for 3 hours due to Dean’s allergies to felines, or even an old record player on which played records that Dean had had as a child (Cas always seemed to prefer Elvis records and listened to them (and occasionally danced to them with Dean) while cleaning the house). But for the most part, Cas just brought back the necessities of domestic life (food, a bed, lamps, lube and condoms, etc.).

     Since Cas could essentially fly anywhere, there was no objection to the thievery of the food except for the moral guilt shown by the angel.

     "Stealing is wrong, Dean. It doesn't weigh well on my conscience for doing this," complained Castiel as he brought in some burger meat, apples, and Goldfish for their dinner that night.

     "Well," said an amused (and hungry) Dean, "then go and find a way to pay them back if it loads down your conscience so much."

     They ate a quiet dinner that night, with Dean having contented thoughts about how great of a turn his life had taken since he had been with Cas, and Castiel himself was staring pensively at his small plate, with a lonely burger resting on it.

     Even though Cas doesn't seem to need to eat, he still has a fond spot for the occasional burger. After Dean had spent that year away from hunting with Lisa, all that experience with outdoor grills and barbeques didn’t go to waste on Castiel. Dean was actually not so bad as a cook, and as long as they kept up their little system (Cas supplying the food, Dean preparing it), life together as two lonely guys (kind of) wasn’t really as bad as some people might think.

     After eating his burger, he hesitated for a moment, almost hovering above Dean, and before he could ask why Cas was doing so, the angel bent down and nervously kissed Dean on the cheek. (Cas was still getting the hang of this “human contact” thing) and with a large, feathery thwumping sound, Dean’s angel had disappeared. Dean felt a little fluttery on the inside himself (and totally wasn’t blushing at all), for this was one of the first times that Castiel had ever initiated a kiss, albeit one on the cheek, but still. Sure, for some couples it may not seem like much, but for Dean and Cas, this step in their relationship reached miles.

     After a few minutes, Dean figured that Castiel had just gone out for the next day’s food a bit early. A bit disappointed but overall contented, Dean had gone to bed, falling asleep with the thought of Castiel in his head. Several hours later, sometime after 3 o’clock in the morning, Dean awoke with a start at the sound of wings entering the room. He looked down at the foot of his bed and saw Castiel standing there, soaked in water and looking not unlike a lost puppy.

     Disheveled as the angel looked, Dean still was happy to see him. He jumped out of bed to greet his partner in crime but not after grabbing a towel from the bathroom. He ran back to his angel and wrapped him in it, also using it as an excuse for a warm embrace.

     “What the hell happened to you, Cas?” asked Dean, muffled against Cas’s neck, before he saw that Castiel looked perfectly happy at the moment (happy for Castiel’s standards, anyways). Castiel looked at Dean's face a few inches away from his own, his body still warming up from the hug. The drenched angel smiled on the inside and outside. They both knew that Cas could get dried off in a few seconds using his mojo, but they were both just fine using his little predicament as an unspoken excuse for contact.

     Breaking the hug, Dean pulled his arms away from Castiel, placed them around the towel-wrapped shoulders of his partner, and leaned his head gently forward towards the stubbly mouth of the other and planted a soft and tender kiss on his lips. The kiss turned very intense, very soon, (Dean later suspected that angel mojo had something to do with that) and it seemed like pure love was flowing through his entire spirit and soul. The ferocity of their emotions, their affection, entirely electricity.  There was no tongue involved, just the friction of warm and hungry lips was enough. It was all Dean could do not to collapse back onto the bed, but by some miracle (also known as angel mojo), he managed to stay upright until the kiss ended, what seemed like eternities later.

     "Dean," said Castiel in his gruff low voice, after the kiss had ended and they were both sitting on the bed, both a bit out of breath. "I'm sorry, that was... unintentional."

     "Hey," Dean replied with a slightly breathless smile as he patted Castiel's shoulder, "It's all good." Cas smiled, at peace.

     He knew Dean would love him to hell and back (occasionally that would be taken quite literally). They were always pleased to see each other and there was nothing, no sacrifice too large, that they wouldn’t consider giving up for their soul mate. From that incident onward, kissing was integral in their daily lives, mostly aided by the fact that Cas had a more implicit trust for Dean and a better liking for the warm and pleasant effects of physical contact. Kissing was comfort; a distraction.

     They had stopped the apocalypse, made their way through terrible circumstances, and all to find themselves here in their own little bubble of life. Reality turned out to be cruel, so they didn’t have to live it. Cas, little by little, made their lives better and better with the angelic powers he possessed, and Dean worked in the more corporeal sense, tweaking their physical lives, until finally, they had achieved the calm and idyllic lives of non-hunters. Castiel and Dean Winchester. They loved it.

     There was only one problem: Winchesters can’t have nice things. Everything they touch ends up broken, and the one thing that this couple knew how to touch were each other’s hearts. Winchesters can’t have nice things, and that curse is the bane of their existence when it actually proves to come true.

     "Cas..." said Dean looking down at his knees.

     "What is it, Dean?" Castiel replied with a hint of concern in his features. His wet hair was in the process of drying and was taking on the look of duck fluff as he asked.

     "I dunno, Cas. This life; it almost seems too good to be true. You and I, we- we have this thing together, and to be perfectly honest, I'm a bit scared." Dean confessed.

     Cas was surprised to hear this sentimental and emotionally vulnerable outburst from his usually stoic partner, but in the spirit of support, Cas decided to ask about it out loud. "What are you scared might happen?" asked Cas.

     "Everything I-” Dean sighs. “The things that are most important to me get broken. Or hurt. Everything with no exceptions, and since that includes you... I don’t know what I’d do if I broke you forever. I just have that effect on people. And if one day, nobody can fix you..."  Dean's voice started to break; the ghosts of tears hiding behind his eyes. The rest of the sentence went unsaid.

     Memories of fallen friends and family members flash through his mind: John, Mary, Ellen, Jo, Ash, all the innocents that Dean never had gotten around to saving. Others (like Cas) would constantly tell Dean that those lost lives weren’t his fault, but then why did Dean still feel their spirits weighing so heavily on his shoulders? Deep down, it was always Dean’s fault. It was the truth, even if nobody could see it but himself. He should have found a way to man up and save those lives, every one of them. Nobody on Earth has more blame on their cards than the man once called Righteous.

     "Don’t say that, Dean. Don’t you ever say that," ordered Cas. He didn’t know where this speech came from, but he would do anything to make it better.

     Everybody around the couple had thought they had observed the somewhat unexpected boost in Dean’s contentment after staying with Cas, and even Castiel himself was beginning to believe that everything was going to be okay. But after this moment of truth, Cas knew something had gone wrong. He should have known. Dean wasn’t getting better. He was getting better at pretending he was; Cas could see it in his eyes.

     Castiel didn’t know what he had done wrong. It seemed as though their fragile relationship with all of its variables and “what if”s had betrayed them once again. There have admittedly been times in the past when Cas wasn’t so positive of Dean’s improvement, such as the time when he found Dean crying softly while looking back at the last pictures of Mary Winchester that he had in his possession. Cas had put aside the moment, deciding not to question Dean about it because it was still a bit too personal.

     "It could happen, Cas, you know it could. We’ve come pretty damn close sometimes, and it’s killing me. And if it did break..." Dean’s voice died off at the end there, a single tear starting to run down his face. Castiel probably has never been the most qualified with human emotions and, frankly, had no solid idea on how to make Dean look at the situation like it could change for the better, but for the sake of his partner, he would do what he could to make things a little better, if possible.

     Castiel laid his hand gently on Dean's cheek. "I would never let that happen, Dean, and you know that," he said soothingly.

     "You mean everything to me,” said Dean, still looking uncharacteristically worried for his usually stoic manner. “and if I let something bad happen to either of us-” Dean was interrupted by the soft and warm sensation that was the feeling of another pair of lips on his own. Slowly leaning into this surprise kiss, Dean manages to get a surprised sort of sound out of Cas’ mouth, or more of a hum, considering where his mouth actually was at the moment.

     It wasn’t exactly in the range of chaste kisses, but it wasn’t exactly the type that led to sex. It was the type that consisted of unspoken words; the type that let the other know exactly how you feel about them, and this kiss in particular had a million words and emotions in it. Castiel’s perpetual stubble was prickly against Dean’s cheek, and it made the whole experience more intense. It wasn’t exactly making out and not just a simple kiss on the lips, but what it did manage to be was just the right way to get the unsaid words across the large emotional barrier in Dean.

     It was Cas who eventually pulled out of the kiss first. “I can't let anything happen... I won’t let anything happen." Dean’s arms were around Cas’ neck and Cas’ hands were resting warmly on Dean’s waist. Even though Dean had the subtle thought in the back of his mind that they looked like an awkward middle school couple doing their first slow dance, he couldn’t find a flying fuck to give.  In an effort to show he didn’t care, he leant forward other and hugged Castiel tightly, perhaps showing a chance for genuine emotional recovery. Dean was proud of Cas for initiating a kiss like that, and Cas was proud of Dean for speaking up about his true feelings, even if it meant they would have to get back to square one now.

     Dean felt a rush of warmth towards this angel, the one who had saved his ass more times than he could count. The words slipped out from his tongue, and even though they didn’t feel like something he normally would say, Dean knew that it was the right thing to exclaim, especially as he knew that it was the best time for the truth.

     “I love you, Cas.”

     Castiel looked at Dean with a surprised expression. Dean closed his eyes and put his chin downwards, his forehead in close proximity to the angel’s lips.

     Dean had always thought sappy emotions be damned, but how fitting that Cas would pull those back from damnation as well. The thought made Dean almost inappropriately giggly. He opened up his eyes and started laughing with his head back, and he soon had tears of laughter on his face.

     Cas smiled in that peculiar half-smile that only he could do and wrapped his arm around Dean’s torso to pull him in to hug.

     Just happy to be alive and with his angel, Dean laughed harder and harder, wondering how he got to this perfect place in his life that he was determined not to let go of. He wrapped his arm’s around Cas’s body and chimes of happiness burst forth from his mouth.

     In the heat of the moment, Cas started laughing too, because the sound of Dean doing it was beautiful and contagious. They both fell back on their bed, and what a sight they were: one giggling angel with a big dark mob of fluff for hair with  a green eyed ex-hunter laughing his heart out while hugging the other. The two of them were a mess like that for a long bit of time, face to face on their sides on their bed and in that moment, neither of them would have been happier anywhere else.

     They fell asleep and their life was going to get better. Or so it seemed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* If anybody asks for it, I'll write a little ficlet about what happened to make Castiel's hair wet. If y'all want to know what happened.


	2. II

     One month later, in the same bed. The two of them were covered in sweat and reeking of unspeakable activities. Still basking in the afterglow, Dean hears his name being called softly from the other side of the bed.

     “Dean?"

     "Yeah, Cas?" he answered, playing with the dark hair in front of him (it is and always has been Dean’s duty to serve as the big spoon). A quiet and curious voice was rising above the comfortable silence between the two men, coming from the little spoon.

     "Dean, why is love so important?" the voice asked. Dean took the question into mind and thought about it. It was a tough thing to answer because how do you explain love to someone who’s just starting to explore it?

     "Well, Cas, it’s complicated,” Dean began. “Some say it’s the most powerful thing in the world, but I don’t believe that bullcrap because everybody knows that’s Chuck Norris.” Dean took a moment to snort before continuing. “Heh, I’m just kidding around with you, Cas, but I think you might take that title home.” Dean stops for a moment and faintly blushes before rambling on.

     “I dunno, really. A lot of people say that it’s important because it binds two people together for- well, forever. Soul mates, right? I guess that kinda fits in with our whole ‘profound bond’ thing we have going on, don’t it?” added Dean.

     Cas interrupted with a hint of wonder in his tone. “You remember that?” The source of his surprise came from the fact that he had said that simple statement a long while previously. It must have been more memorable than he had thought.

     “Well, yeah,” Dean supplied, a bit embarrassed. “How could I forget? It was the first really significant way that you had said we had something together. It meant a lot and it still does.”

     Cas smiled inwardly, filled with affection and love towards the man behind him. Clearly, what had originally been meant to be a factual state of sentiment had lasted far beyond its time. Not that Castiel was complaining.

     Dean took the contented silence as a cue to keep on going to continue his explanation on the importance of love. “I mean, that’s what other people say, but I’ve got my own opinion from what little personal experience I’ve got. For me, love’s always been an anchor to my family, something that just glues us all together. I guess that’s why Sammy and I have always been so close; that sense of family love just keeps us together, makes sure we have the other’s back.”

     At this point, Castiel was a bit disturbed. “So the love you harbor for me is the same as is for your brother?” Dean was confused for a moment before a grin split his face.

     “Wow, Cas. Sometimes it’s hard to remember you’re not totally human. Nah, we have a different type of love; the brotherly, family, not romantical type. Believe me, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” At this, Castiel seemed to cut off the nervous energy he didn’t know he was radiating.

     “If that’s why it’s so important, then how does one find it?" Cas suddenly asked.

     "Well, Cas, aren’t angels supposed do their matchmaking to fix humans up? You know, with Cupid and such. I’d like to think that celestial powers have no place in my sex life, thank you very much. You’ll know when the right one is there. After all, I knew it when I met you."

     Dean couldn't help smiling at Cas, and vice versa. The two of them just knew they were perfect for each other. How did Dean turn into such a sap? It’s not an unpleasant feeling but an unexpected one at least. He should probably cut out the girly talk before he spontaneously grows boobs. But in all honesty, they have always felt so natural with each other.

     But if all was well (mostly), then why did somewhere, deep down inside the damned and damaged crevices of his soul, Dean have a gut feeling something was going to go wrong? He wanted to tell Cas but they had already gone through that conversation. But Dean was so worried and so conflicted: he wanted to tell Cas the truth but at the same time he wanted Cas to think that he was getting better, even if that was all a load of lies.

     "Cas, can I ask you something?" He asked running his fingers through Castiel's strangely comforting soft dark hair.

     "Of course, Dean, always," Cas answered.

     "Do you ever have this weird feeling... that something might just go wrong between us? Or... that maybe something already has?" Dean’s voice faltered a bit near the end. He was relieved to have gotten that out, but at the same time concerned about what the reply might be. The aura in the room seemed to grow darker somehow, as if the sudden feeling of high tension was palpable in the air. Time had stopped.

     In the iota of time Dean had to worry, he considered the options of response. Castiel could reply with annoyance that they had been over this already (as John would have), or perhaps with pity and perhaps attempted understanding (such as Sam may have), or, even anger!

     But what really happened was that Cas sighed and turned away. Dean’s heart dropped through the floor.

     No one knew what Dean had really been through. No matter how heartbroken someone could claim to be, even in the darkest pits of their souls, a hunter named Dean Winchester had a soul so darkened with depression and hellfire alike that it made even the darkest depths of the deepest abyss seem bright.

     Forty years in Hell can pollute even the most pristine soul with its fire, and with that knowledge, imagine what it could do to a soul like Dean’s; a soul whose innocence had by all means been swiped away at every possible opportunity. Nothing good of his ever lasted. And just when he feels like it couldn’t be getting any worse, the rug keeps getting ripped out from under his feet. Again. And again. And again and again and again until any semblance of purity in his spirit is just a distant foggy memory.

     He wished he could feel no pain. After all, not being able to feel a damn thing must be better than feeling all the damn things, right? He wished that by some miracle, Castiel would be able to take away the great pain that had filled his soul over the years, the gap in his heart that nothing seemed to be able to fill, the darkening void like a stain on his spirit. Now, that’s not saying that being with Castiel counted for nothing, but if Dean was telling himself the truth, Cas’s company was only slightly dampening on the constant vice of weakness: constantly crushing, smashing, pulverizing. But now, it has evolved, mutated, until the simple gap had become a hollow shell where a heart used to rest.

     How could he be loved with something so dark inside himself? Hidden behind the high bulwark of protection consisting of heavy sarcasm and thick innuendo lies nothing. A great empty nothingness devoid of positive emotion. Being the selfish human that he is, he wanted Cas to be the one to fill the hole.

     In his heart of hearts, Dean knew he could barely do it anymore. Every waking hour had become a struggle, and every false smile weighed down on him, all because he knew he was portraying a lie. The armor he used to hide himself was getting heavier, and it leads to the big question- when will it collapse? He’s pretty sure that Castiel has been the only thing keeping that fragile metal frame vertical. And in a way, he might be grateful for that, but when Dean really thinks about it, it just isn’t worth Cas’s time to keep him together like this.

     What it all came down to was the fact that Dean was just tired of it all. And all he could hope for is for Cas to hear his prayers.

     The night had grown silent. Cas had disappeared, and if Dean wasn’t so intent on making himself remember of the hatred he harbors for himself, he probably would have thought of this as selfish. But, alas- an undamaged mind thinks on a higher slope than the one whose nightmares have appeared before them.

     With a mockery of faith, Dean began to pray.

      _Oh Castiel._

      _You might have noticed that I’m getting worse. Sorry for the lies. I can only hope for you to heal me and make me feel again. If you don’t-  (well, it’s more likely that you can’t), then nobody can. Sorry, I’ll be I’ll be forced to forced to rid my own life of the everlasting pain they call my miserable existence._

     Dean felt that, inside, his suffering was so great, so without hope, Death may become his final option. Castiel had been the first one ever to lessen the pain, and the desire of ending it all, but still, no angel could truly sense the pain that their Hell-dwelling cousins could inflict on a soul. Needless to say, Dean’s depression has been lowering.

     Depression is a tough concept for the masses to wrap their heads around.  the portrayals of how it apparently feels like have been skewed by media and television and those fake emotions and shitty emo scenes in movies have been what the general population has adopted as their understanding of the disorder. What people think depression is like is pretty damn far off from what it’s actually like.

     Dean has had depression for who knows how long, probably since his mom died. And even Dean probably didn't even realise it, at least not at first. After faking all those smiles for little Sam (and then later, Cas), you start to think that sometimes, you might have a chance of having a happy life. After all, look at how much you’re smiling!

     But for Dean depression was not a mental illness. It's a life. His life. He always imagined depression as the angels see heaven, in his own personal way. Being big and vast and having all things great, perhaps it could hold everything you could ever want. But there was a queer feeling like something was missing. A hole in his life. He has what he wants: family and a lover. Then why does the hole keep deepening?

     Somewhere deep down he's happy but even deeper Dean knows he's just not happy enough, and faking it will always end in lies, and he feels like he never will be. You can feel happy and think that you can never be sad again, but then there’s the opposite- that’s depression. It’s much easier to fall from Heaven than work your way back up, and if happiness is heaven and sadness is everything below, isn’t that the goddamn truth?

     It’s always like he just wants cry his eyes out, but for no reason. He wants break stuff and scream it out but he’s trapped in his rusting metal frame. So much for a knight. Even his internal metaphors come to a terrible end, so how’s that for faking it? He just can’t take it anymore.

     All Dean really wanted was for the pain to stop or for it never to have happened in the first place. Isn’t it a quote from some of their cases back when he used to hunt? It’s better to never have been born than to die a terrible death. In this case, Dean was willing to take either offer.

     Anything to lessen the pain! Anything to shrink the hole! Anything to finish himself off! Anything at all. Why couldn't the angel give him that, huh?

      _It hurts to much to even be alive._

     It took him a while, but he figured out the truth: when he went to Hell, he wasn’t scared. He thought he was. But the pain inflicted on himself was okay. He _deserved_ to be punished. Pain was just how he took it, and the blades and needles and razors and whips were all justified in the fact that he felt he deserved them all. Every drop of blood was for a reason.

     In a way, it was all fair, especially when he started to pick up the whip. The reason why he liked torturing souls? Even though he knows that nobody down in the pit could be as bad of a fuckup as him, he picked up the chain and started swinging. His incentive? It wasn't pay. It wasn’t pleasure. The reason he tortured souls and felt it was just was that everybody was like him to some degree. If they were down in the bloody screaming pain that was the underworld, then it only meant that they were like Dean. And if they were like Dean, they deserved to be punished.

     To this very day, Dean isn’t even afraid of Death anymore. One day, the king of reapers will come to Dean for the final time, and Dean will greet him like an old friend. He only hopes that he gets to go back to hell to finish the job on his soul and perhaps becoming a being that doesn’t have one. Of course, leaving Earth would have one requirement beforehand- nothing should happen to Castiel after Dean’s departure. He just want to protect him forever, no matter his form, no matter even if it’s beyond the grave. Cas was his one true love and he just wants to hold him and love him with as much time as he’s got. The two are mortals (mostly), but Cas could and would probably outlive Dean because he’s an angel, so he has a much lesser chance of dying. In a second Cas would give up his Grace so that he could be a mortal with Dean. But if Dean got hurt, who would heal him? Yet  here Dean is, already hurt on the inside and not cured.

      _What's the friggin' point of your "healing" and "special powers" if you can't heal this pain? Am I not hurting enough for you to feel it?_

     Dean stood up and he raged, and with each tear, a rusty spot appeared on his armor. "WHAT'S THE POINT OF IT ALL? WHY CAN’T YOU FEEL IT?" He screamed. He yelled. He sobbed and he released. Perhaps the apparently nonexistent emotions weren’t gone, just dormant? Because if they were sleeping, then that particular night was one hell of an alarm clock. Every emotion (spare the happy ones) fell down his face and out of his mouth, a crashing storm full of rage and loss and feeling. Sharp words and stabbing thoughts, acid tears and burning hate. One man with so much lost was feeling again in the worst possible way.

     In other words, Dean had a meltdown.

     The praying and screaming of his righteous man shone like a beacon to Castiel, and all of a sudden Dean had a confused and semi surprised angelic addition in his room. It was their room no more. It was less of an unspoken statement rather than a hastily thrown vase thrown across the room aimed vaguely next to Cas and a sobbed exclamation from the broken human across the room: “Why are we even still pretending this is working? You should leave, before I hurt you. I don’t want myself to rub off on you. Just- go. Don’t bother coming back.” Castiel looked at Dean with more than a bit of shock as Dean wearily sat down on the bed, emotions still running strong.

     "Dean, what’s happening here?” Cas replied in response to the heart-shattering command. “Where did I go wrong? What did I do? Where did we go wrong? Don’t do this, Dean, I know we can fix it. Just like we always have." Even as he said the words, he could feel the lack of effect it had on his partner.

     Dean sobbed again on the bed, his voice was growing raw. He welcomed the self inflicted pain in his voice even though it made his next statements sound even more pathetic.

     "H- how could you not _feel_ my pain, Cas? IT’S ALL INSIDE OF ME.” Dean roared. “How can you worry about ‘us,’” he spat, “when I am fucking DEAD INSIDE?”

     Cas was ashamed of himself. With all the precious time he’s spent on Earth, the one human he was closest to has been so broken on the inside and he hadn’t even noticed? Talk about pathetic. Dean was right- at least, in a way. Cas should definitely go, but not for the reasons that Dean wanted him to.

     Cas needed to leave because he knows (or at least thinks) that he is what has kept Dean from getting better. All of the lies were so that Cas wouldn’t know about what was really going on. He couldn’t be trusted with Dean’s heart by living with him and loving him, and he should have never been trusted with his soul when pulling him up from perdition. Look at how damaged Dean was by his years down there! A better seraph than Castiel, rebellious angel of Thursday, would have been better suited to pick this soul back together.

     Tenderly, like one might approach a landmine, is how Castiel walked up to Dean right then, with hurt in both pairs of eyes and ugly thoughts in their minds.

     “I’m sorry I failed you so badly. Perhaps one day we will see the end of this,” Cas said. Dean didn’t know if he was referring to the end of this dispute or their lives, but another end was coming to a close- the end of an era.

     And with the sound of swooping wings and the sobs of a broken man on a lonely king-sized bed in a cabin now shared by no one, the once faithful armor toppled into the dust.


	3. III

     Cas had just left the room when Dean realized what exactly he had done. He didn’t regret it, but he knew he already missed the stupid bastard. Closing his eyes in exasperation and throwing his hands up in frustration, he cursed, "Dammit, Cas!" Yelling loudly, he swept his hands in a rage across the modern looking IKEA table, taking out the books and guns and papers and all the other things that were on it and hearing them crash down onto the scuffed hardwood floor below with a clatter.

     He felt like he would have continued his crying if not for the fact that his eyes were not wet. He’d finally run dry, with all of his tears spent in his rage against Cas. Or rather, his rage against himself. He felt the tough shell he so often used on masking himself come creeping back up on him, and he toughened up, even though there was nobody to toughen up for. At least, that's what was happening on the outside. On the inside, he’d finally gone past his Rubicon.

     "Dammit, Dean," he thought to himself in an echo of his old military father’s old military tone. He hated everything about life right now and how everything positive in his existence had changed. How the hell could he have been so stupid? He’d lost Sam and Cas because they were obviously better off without him. Why else would they have abandoned him so soon after things changed?

     Without Cas to pray to, he only wished upon the empty promises of childhood and everything ensuing. Praying had proved to be useless; wishing (however hopeless) had to be an improvement. Anything to make it better.

     He wished for Gabriel to put him back into a tv show. After all, fiction (or in a parody of it) is always infinitely better than reality. (Ever heard of escapism?) He wished that he even could have said yes to Michael and the rest of those angelic douchebags the first time they’d asked. After all, Michael had promised that he would keep Dean’s body intact after being his vessel (unlike Raphael and the poor bastard he used to contain himself in). Perhaps if he had said yes, maybe he would be a little less angry and in a little less pain than he was in at the moment. In addition, the death tolls of Lucifer’s time on Earth would perhaps be smaller if Dean had saved them all with a sacrifice.

     These are the thoughts of a desperate man who thinks he has nothing, and no one left to lose.

     "This sucks. Everything fucking sucks. Everything fucking sucks and I can’t do anything about it!" Dean was ranting out loud, trying to rationalize his hasty decision. All the while, he was hurting inside, more than he thought he could have. It wasn’t bearable; like sharp stabbing pains and dull punch-like throbbing all at once everywhere and yet nowhere- he felt it on him and in him but at the same time, he wasn’t actually feeling it. A cruel trick of the mind, exaggerating the pain of the spirit by implementing it on the body. Still, it’s actually hard to believe that a simple human could be in that much pain, real or not.

     But the worst thing is that he could hear over and over again in his head what Gabriel had once said.

     "I want it to be over!"

     The helplessness in his voice, and the ferocity of which it demanded its desires; it echoed like a bell in a clock tower, ringing and ringing, demanding to get its message across. He rubbed his temples, still reciting the desperate anthem in his mind.

     Even if he couldn’t bring himself to permanently end the pain at the moment, he could still bring himself a more temporary way to calm his soul. He got into bed, and it wasn’t until his head hit the pillow that he noticed how incredibly tired he was. Dean soon found himself in a vague, yet menacing, dark and dreamless sleep.

* * *

 

 

     Castiel was thinking. Pondering the harsh words uttered to him by his lover (ex-lover? That's not right.) was going to be a matter on his mind for a long time. Everything was hurting, and his wings (also visible through his aura) seemed to shrink and shiver simply at the thoughts going through his battered and thoroughly confused mind.

     Reading auras was no new trick in Castiel’s book, as he’d been exploiting the power ever since his creation. Every angel in all levels of the holy hierarchy has some sort of unique special power that’s usually something that makes the drone-like personalities of angels stand apart. Of course, Cas is (and never was) an ordinary angel, but he got a special gift nevertheless, and his was the ability to read auras with excruciating detail.

     The first time Cas had laid eyes on Dean in the dark and dismal depths of his own personalized hell, it was clearly apparent that he was the righteous man. The inner chambers of his soul were glowing far brighter than the soul of any angel he’d ever seen. It was stunning, and desperate and beautiful all at the same time. Not to forget, tortured.

     Even though the wavelengths of sound don’t manage to exist in the lower realm in the same way that they do on the surface of the earth, it was clear that this soul was _screaming_. It hurt to be witnessing something- someone- so beautiful in this much torment. Even though Dean was the one flaying the skin off the sinners with a razor thin bullwhip and a strike so cruel it would be a sin to even speak of it, he was the one whose misery was made deafening by the resonations of his screams across the underworld.

     Souls have different layers. Even average humans can see parts of the soul without any celestial interference, if they at least know how to observe versus just seeing. The very outermost shell of the soul is called the “face,” which is a title that applies metaphorically _and_ literally. It’s a metaphorical “face” because it’s the top layer of the soul, just as the face is on the skin of a physical human body. It’s a "face" in a literal sense because this layer of the soul is shown by your actual face. In essence, the feelings that you show on your physical face determine what appears on your soul's “face.”

     This level of the human soul has varying degrees of opacity, and depending on the person, it's sometimes fluctuating. If you show what you're truly feeling on your face or in the ways you act, then the top layer of your soul would be more transparent. That’s describing a soul like Sam's. However, the top layer of Dean’s soul is quite the opposite. Transparency is what let's you see through to the deeper levels of the soul, and Dean's "face" was completely opaque.

     Without physical forms down in the Pit, the only parts of the soul Cas could see were the inner layers. After all, that’s how the Powers That Be judge whose soul goes where, after life. When your physical form is left behind, it leaves the true contents of your soul clear to see. Those with murky and malintentioned souls go down, and those with brighter, well-intentioned, souls who’ve done their duty well go up. Of course, that always left the exceptions of those who made deals for their souls who go to their perdition either way.

     When Cas took his trip down there, it was apparent who belonged and who was there by force. Dean’s soul was so clear and full of love and purpose (beneath the bloodstains), Cas had assumed that when he got to see Dean with his faces (both of them), they would be the same. Easy to see through and full of hope (minus the bloodstains, of course). Well Cas was in for a shock when he first saw the Righteous Man on Earth. Dean’s physical face was not bad looking by human standards at all, but it wasn’t anything _near_ the level of beauty of the inner layers of his soul. As for the face of the soul? Completely opaque; darkened over time by years of depression and misfortune. That mission to save Dean was the only time Cas had gotten to see what was inside Dean’s soul, and it was stupid for him to have thought that he could have managed to see it again.

     Of course, Cas should have remembered that. Especially when he noticed an unprecedented spike in Dean’s apparent optimism, shown on his faces. Of course, the angel should have known that the face can always be deceiving, literal or metaphorical. Of course, Castiel should have remembered how tortured the inner levels of Dean's soul were without the opaque mask of the physical form in Hell. Castiel was so incredibly ignorant, how could his angelic memory not have recalled?

     But in Cas's defense, being with Dean was enough of a distraction. Dean, with his beautiful eyes and virtues and heart full of love for everybody. Love for everybody, apparently, except himself. And if that didn't just _rip_ Castiel apart. Dean was hurting so much and Cas was too preoccupied with Dean's eyes and little bee statues? How _dare_ he? If this is what happened when Castiel was loved, then he doesn't deserve it.

     Did Dean even love him in the first place? Or just taking the poor rebellious angel under a roof under the guise of pity? Who could love someone this ignorant?

     And while one angel tumbled into the underestimated horrors of doubt and despair, an ex lover found he had nothing left to live for.

     The epic love story of the rusty armor and the broken wings finished a chapter that day. But, just like all good tales, their story continues.

 


	4. IV

     Dean awoke in his own bed the next morning, groggy and restless. And, as he discovered while looking at the rest of his bed, alone. He was the only one in this bed. Not, of course, that he was expecting anyone else to be in bed with him. It wasn't as though he still held the absurd hope that everything previously had been a horrid lucid nightmare. Did last night really happen? He felt a surge of self hatred rising up inside him, oddly cold and numbing versus the suffocating heat that usually came from despising himself, and the monstrosities called his life decisions.

     Had he seriously been so stupid? After all of the long years of his childhood spent learning to suppress his feelings for fear of showing weakness, _now_ was the time he finally broke?

     He felt like a freak. Why couldn't he be happy like everyone else? Why couldn't he let go of these problems from his past, especially when people in other places had it so much worse than him? Even when he tried his hardest, he couldn't even keep the only being in the entire cosmos that could still at least put on a mask of toleration for Dean with him. How could Dean's own mask of stoic and sarcastic snark have failed him this time?

      _Ah._

     It wasn't a matter of not letting Cas see through the face, but more the fact that Dean had shown too much of what was beneath it. That had to be the problem. Not even Dean could stand his own soul, and so why would Cas feel differently?

     Emotions were muddling Dean's recollections of the night before. Spiraling lower and lower into the ever widening crevasse of depression, he succumbed to his own body’s intentions and started slipping in and out of consciousness for a majority of the day. He vaguely thinks that at one point he got up to use the john, and another time to grab a bowl of whole wheat cheerios from the pantry, sometime around 3 PM. Which soon made him fall asleep again.

     He didn't recollect getting appropriately dressed for anything, much less gathering the nerve to drive to the nearest bar in a half alert state. But somehow, when he jolted into a full, wide-eyed panic reminiscent of waking up after a gruesome and realistic night terror, it was a few seconds before he realized he had for some reason driven himself to a random sports bar named Kripke's.

     By the looks of his surroundings, a football game was showing on a large screen on the opposite side of the room, where the majority of pot-bellied fans that frequented the place were all gathered, some yelling various slurred encouragements to the unhearing TV. The communal focus on the idiot box was a cause for Dean to be grateful for, because nobody had noticed him dozing off in front of his drink at the bar. Even the bartender was preoccupied with the match, so Dean was saved from the embarrassment.

     He quickly wiped a bit of drool that had leaked out the side of his mouth and rubbed his eyes, trying to regain his composure. _What time is it anyways?_ A quick glance through the closest window showed that it was in the early stages of the night. Maybe around seven or eight? It didn't matter, really. Dean had no reason to be on time for anything now. The thought started a dull ache to his insides; thinking of Cas and what he had repulsed to the point of leaving was still raw and painful.

     Having his support for his now weakening armor so suddenly gone was not faring well for the eldest living Winchester. The emptiness was so incredibly pronounced now, and numbness would be gratefully accepted. Of course, that's how it always has to end up, doesn't it? Dean on his own, filling his armor up with empty shot glasses and empty beer bottles till everything goes numb again, till he forgets that he can't stand alone.

     Dean drinks from the half full beer bottle in front of him, the one that was previously neglected for his nap. Once it was finished off, he found himself with an empty shot glass in place of his beer bottle. Shot glasses were being refilled endlessly, it seemed, with his vision growing steadily blurrier and murkier. Time was slowing and speeding. It got darker outside. It got darker on the inside. Darkness. Dean could live with darkness. Or not. He didn’t really care.

      _Maybe I'll just rest a while._

 

* * *

 

     Sam hadn't heard from Dean and Cas in a while. And isn't that funny, how the two separate units had become inseparable as one. No more Dean and Cas as individuals; it was now replaced by Dean'n'Cas, the one entwined and love-worn hunter/angel mix who used to bring Sam along on hunts. Except, now they hunted for the perfect milieu of domesticity, versus the supernatural creatures that haunted nightmares.

     It wasn't as though their relationship was unexpected. To Sam at least. Dean had always been so thick when it came to (not) acknowledging Cas's eye-sex that was perpetually aimed at him. Likewise, Cas had always been too busy checking Dean out so he never noticed that it was being shot right back at him.

     However, Dean's reluctance to recognize the subtle flirting wasn't just because he failed to notice it. It was always that the older brother would never accept love as love, especially when he thinks he doesn't deserve it. Which  is pretty often.

     Dean may think that his barricade against showing true emotion worked on everyone, and he acted accordingly. However, a lifetime of growing up with the man lead Sam to see just how exactly Dean was feeling underneath all the bullshit smiles, and Sam (for the most part) played along with the guise, till something tells him something is too wrong to go without comment. Of course, Dean would deny such emotions to his dying day, but Sam thinks that somewhere in there, Dean is grateful that someone can see the truth.

     When Cas had picked Dean up from the dark, scary, _real-life_ hell he was in, of course it would be natural for Dean to be troubled. But somehow, the internal trauma didn’t seem to be as strong as Sam had expected. It didn’t take much to correlate the boost in Dean’s well-being to Castiel. When Sam had really started to pay attention to Dean when he was around Cas, it was so incredibly obvious that they were falling for each other that Sam could tell that there was going to be a long and exasperating road ahead.

* * *

 

     Fast forward to the night they stopped the apocalypse. Dean and Cas still hadn’t gotten together, but Sam was hoping for another miracle. After all, a miracle among miracles had happened that day- they’d shot Lucifer with the Colt and the horrors that came along with having the devil himself walking the Earth all seemed to cease. The earthquakes, the plagues, the (super)natural disasters- all of it. In addition, the demonic followers egging on the cataclysm that surrounded their leader all seemed to either flee, go into hiding, or engage in  inactivity when their father took the path of annihilation. Lucifer, of all specimens, should have known not to underestimate the Winchesters. Being so overconfident about his ability to rule over the Earth was his mistake, and the mistake of all the others, human or nonhuman, who’ve tried to overtake our globe.

      _Stubborn bunch of bastards_ , thought Chuck with a fatherly sort of pride, as he observed one of his precious children fall to his demise at the hands of said species of bastards.

     Michael would have still needed to be taken care of if Castiel had not mysteriously managed to convince Michael to return to Heaven after the downfall of the devil. However, nobody aside from Castiel and Michael himself knew how he got his elder brother to piss off and leave this planet alone. For now at least, Sam, Dean, and Bobby decided against pressing the angel for details. If there were repercussions, they could deal with them later; for now this little gang of world-savers were in desperate need of a “We Stopped The End Of The World. Again.” celebration. And by celebration, it meant drinking from Bobby’s artfully stocked liquor cabinet till everyone passed out. Though they’d saved the world for the umpteenth time, it would never balance out the lives lost of strangers and friends alike; the shot glasses couldn’t come out soon enough.

     Two hours later, Bobby’s liquor supply had been decimated by the four tired hunters. Bobby, who was lying on the roof of a junker under the stars, was singing something that vaguely sounded like Celine Dion. Dean, heavily flushed and tipsily leaning about on the couch, was happily examining the room around him, dramatically turning his head up to the sky and studying the ceiling, before moving onto the walls and furniture. Dean was quite imbalanced, the happy drunk, and henceforth almost teetered over onto Castiel’s lap next to him. Cas wasn’t distracted, however, because he seemed to be trapped in a staring contest with the dusty old lamp on the other end of the room. Though Cas’s eyes were drooping and his elbows were perched on top of his knees, with palms on his chin (an unusually casual pose for the celestial being to take), there wasn’t too much of a difference from his regular demeanor to show that he was quite intoxicated.

     This left Sam in a great position. Sitting slumped on the chair in the corner of the room, pretending to have blacked out, the younger brother was almost able to have an unobstructed view of his brother and his angel from a point where they couldn’t (or didn’t want to) see him. His sight was partially blocked due to the fact that his Rapunzel-like hair was hanging out over his face, but that was okay though- he was willing to sacrifice a bit of his visual clarity for a convincing act. The main fault in his plan of action wasn’t in that he couldn’t see all too clearly, but because the slump in his shoulders wasn’t all because he was a great actor- he actually _had_ drank a lot of alcohol that night, and it was starting to get to him. Gradual cognitive impairment may be a demotivating factor for some, but not Sam. He was _very_ determined to see how this potentially romantic moment between Dean and his angel might turn out, no matter how drunk he was.

     So far, nothing really interesting had happened. At least not yet. Cas was still staring at that fucking lamp with deathly intense eyes, almost like he could make it blink using only the power of his mind. Dean, being the drunk doof that he was, started to scooch closer to Cas for whatever reason a drunk man would want to be closer to his totally, absolutely, 100% “platonic” best friend for. He was trying to be subtle about it- well, basically as subtle as a man in his intoxicated state could be. Which is to say, not subtle at all. He gradually started hopping a few inches at a time in the angel’s general direction until the two were hugging thighs. Most normal people would probably notice if their thighs were suddenly using the buddy system, but Cas was no normal person. He wasn’t even human! Of course, as always, he was oblivious. His lack of focus to anything around him was basically accentuated by his alcohol consumption.

     The failed effort to get Cas’s attention didn’t faze Dean. Much like Sam, Dean could be a stubborn ass when he wanted to be, so there was to be no giving up in the equation. For his next try, Dean started laughing hysterically at a bug or something else he deemed to be hilarious, and suddenly was in the midst of a giggling fit. All of a sudden, this change of approach finally tipped him over with a small “oof!” onto Cas’s lap. Or rather, onto his crotch. Sam was almost giggling too at this sudden advancement, but even in his state of stupor, he suppressed the urge in order to see the consequences.

     It was consequences Sam was waiting for, and consequences he received. The moment Dean’s head went into the vicinity of the angel’s “dangly bits”, Cas’s eyes widened the tiniest bit, his cheeks flushed, and he let out the smallest of gasps. And then he blinked. The second his eyes closed, every light in Bobby’s house shut off. Including the lamp Cas had been in a staring contest with.

     Dean, who was definitely not expecting the lights to go out, thought this was the funniest shit on Earth. His laughter went from the stage “wow, these funny cat videos are pretty good!” to the much louder and raucous stage of “HAHAHA look at the falling goats! where have these been my entire life? give me 500 of them” in the scale of drunken laughter.

     Sam had no idea why Dean’s laughter suddenly stopped (and still doesn’t know to this day), but what he does know is that, when the lights came back on a while later (Sam’s sense of time wasn’t too precise at that time), Cas and Dean had disappeared from the room, presumably having flown somewhere else with less of an audience.

     Sam hadn’t dared get out of his chair to see what was going on in the dark for several reasons. Firstly, whatever was going on would have surely been interrupted if Sam had called out or broken his very realistic blacked-out act. And secondly, that chair was just _so nice_ and it would be offensive if Sam left his new love, The Chair. The last thought in his mind that night was

      _Maybe they finally admitted their love for each other finally because that would be very nice and I could finally admitted my love for you, Chair. What d’ya think? Are they as in love as me and you ‘cause me and you are pretty in love. Maybe us all can have a same wedding or something-_

     Sam blacked out for real this time, with romantic thoughts of chairs in his dreams and nothing more.

 

 


	5. V

     That night was the breaking point in Dean and Cas’s strange, sexual tension filled relationship. Though it seemed to Sam that neither of them remembered (or perhaps, they didn’t speak of) the events of what happened the night previously, they both seemed to be a lot closer. But to Sam’s dismay, they weren’t acknowledging it in public yet. (Then again, things were missing from Sam’s memory that he didn’t really want to think too hard about either. Something about chairs in lingerie?)

     There came a point where it was so blatantly obvious that Sam was on the brink of shouting, “GET ON AND KISS ALREADY!” but that probably wouldn’t be the best course of action. He finally got his miracle when, after witnessing several weeks of pure sexual tension, Dean finally took Sam into a separate room and shyly mumbled something about him and Cas being “together, like you know, in the other way.” Sam quietly accepted this “new” fact and excused himself from the building.

     Once outside and out of hearing range, Sam did a happy dance. Like, a full on booty shaking, whooping and hollering, jumping all over the place, **happy dance.** However, the youngest Winchester’s dancing skills were so fabulous, it literally cannot be described. We’ll leave it up to your imagination.

     He composed himself and walked back to Dean and Cas’s room. Dean was looking quite frightened (underneath his neutral face), almost like he expected Sam to start yelling at him. Sam walked right up to his role model and gave him a big hug. The hug that said all the words that didn’t want to be shared through the air, the ones that would have been lost had they been translated into our weak spoken language. English, and all other terrestrial tongues can convey messages of the mind, but the languages and letters we’ve constructed for ourselves lack the ability to convey the truly important things. We on Earth rely on the stronger physical signs to relay our soul’s intent, and this hug was the best example of that.

     Pulling away, Sam saw the look in Dean’s eyes. They were glassy, almost tearful, and full of love. They said the silent _thank you_ that Sam had needed to see. Sam nodded, with the love mirroring back in his eyes, and took a look at Cas, who was sitting on the couch, focusing on something else. Sam made a motion to Dean that said _Is it okay if I go talk to him?_ Dean nodded and headed to the bathroom to wipe the traces of tears from his eyes.

     Cas looked up as Sam sat on the couch next to him. “Hello, Sam.”

     Sam almost laughed at how cordial Cas always seemed with everyone. With all of the perpetual change that always seemed to be happening in their lives, Cas’s greetings never really seemed to change.

     “Hey Cas. So you and Dean are together now, yeah?”

     Cas nodded. “Yes, we are ‘official’ now,” he said as he used the air quotes. “I would have made the fact open to you at an earlier time, but Dean seemed hesitant to speak of it to you,” he continued. “Apparently, in this culture, the gender of one’s partner is taboo if they aren’t of the opposite gender, which is nonsensical, because there are infinite combinations of gender expressed in you humans, and to assume that there are only two is very limiting. But this conversation is one for another day. I am indifferent to sexual orientation, but it seems that Dean was not raised that way.”

     Sam sighed. Of _course_ Dean would be scared that Sam was prejudiced, and that was only to be expected. Their father was anything but accepting, and would even go to the point where he wouldn’t take cases from same sex couples. Not that John didn’t want to kill the spirit or whatever was ailing them, but that he didn’t think they deserved to be saved. He even used slurs and very offensive language in the faces of the kind couples. Sam never saw the problem with loving people like yourself, but Dean must have been paying more attention when John was yelling slurs and became scared of what would have happened if he turned out to be like the couples as well. John was dead now, but Dean’s fear of being hated by his brother lived on. If that was why the new couple had waited so long before telling Sam, then he could forgive that.

     “It’s okay, Cas. I get what you’re saying. I just wanted to tell you a few things,” Sam said. “First of all, I don’t think I ever thanked you for how much you’ve helped us all in the past year or so. Plus, pulling Dean from Hell wasn’t that bad either,” Sam snickered. “Anyways, since you’re officially with Dean now, there are a few things you’ll have to know. Dean has had a rough past, and you know that. But really, it’s thanks to your help that he’s gotten back on track. If you ever get to a point where he falls way off the rails, don’t hesitate to call me. I can call his bullshit. Okay?” It was a bit of a long shot, but Sam hoped Cas got the implication of how strong Dean’s depression was.

     Cas looked like he got the message. Or at least, Sam hoped so. There was no more time to elaborate because Dean came back into the room a few seconds after Sam finished talking. Sam thanked the two of them and left them to themselves. If Cas didn’t get what he was saying, shit was going to hit the fan sooner or later. But Sam wasn’t going to interrupt the moment to continue his message. Dean would probably get pissed at Sam for thinking that he needed to be watched over. But Sam had seen Dean have a break down before. For someone to witness one who wasn’t prepared, it could be a lot to process, so Sam was wishing for the best.

     Sam split with the two a month or two after he figured they would be better off without him. He would keep hunting, but hunts were growing sparse after Lucifer’s fall. It was less demons, and more spirits and wendigos and ghouls now. Demons had fled the Earth, and all was not well, but better.

     Still, though it seemed like they were fine by themselves, Sam couldn’t help but to keep both their numbers on speed-dial.

 

* * *

 

     To present day: Sam was a bit concerned about the state of Dean and Cas. It had been several months since he’d gotten in contact with them, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He’d told Cas to call if Dean broke down, and no phone calls meant that there wasn’t any problem so big that they couldn’t handle it alone. Still, autumn was now upon them, and it was starting to get to Sam. Perhaps he could call them to check in on how things are doing under the guise of Thanksgiving plans. Yes, Sam could do that. It was decided: if Dean or Cas didn’t call by the end of the week for an update, Sam was going to drive to The Hut himself to see the state of things.

     Sam was living in an apartment in Norfolk, Nebraska, where he worked part time for an animal shelter and the evening shift as a waiter for a local Italian restaurant. He would have preferred the high-end French restaurant, but he didn’t get hired due to the fact that the manager wanted him to cut his hair for fear that he would mistakenly get some in the customer’s food. Any job that required Sam to shorn his precious locks was not one that he would take. So he worked at the Italian place, where he could just tie his hair back with a small elastic as a happy compromise.

     The town where The Hut resides is a few hours away from the city where Sam was because he couldn’t bear to be too far away from his brother and his angel. Just in case.

     It had been five days since Sam made that promise to himself, and he was growing steadily more anxious as the week went by. After going back to his little place, somewhere after 9 pm, he was about to turn in for the night. Helping the animals at the shelter started at 6 in the morning, and he knew by experience that if he didn’t fall asleep before 10, he was in for hell the next day. Around 9:30, he was getting in some leisurely reading done when he heard the sound of a melodious harp tune. He looked around for its source when he saw that it was his phone. The celestial ringtone meant that it was Cas! Finally, he was getting an update.

     Sam answered the call. “Cas? Hey, how’s it going? Everything okay?” He was not expecting what came next.

     “Sam! I don’t know what I did, it’s just that he’s gone and I should have remembered his faces and his soul and I messed up and everything’s wrong and I lost him and-” Cas’s voice was shaky and weak, in hysterics almost like he’d been crying. Sam was petrified at the thought of what could possibly do this to an angel of the lord, and even more worried about what the message itself contained.

     “Cas! Whoa, calm down. What’s going on? Take some deep breaths first, then explain,” Sam attempted to calm the angel.

     Cas took a few deep, rattling breaths through the receiver and started explaining. He spoke of the false smiles and the way Dean’s soul looked in Hell; flooding the receiver with the tale of how they split up, of how overnight, Cas had been extracted from Dean’s life. Apparently, Cas had flown back to the Hut that night to see if Dean was going to welcome his presence, but the entire place was empty. Upon finding no trace of Dean’s whereabouts anywhere in the Hut, Cas had decided to finally call Sam.

     After Cas finished, Sam had to take a few moments to process this. Of course, Cas didn’t get the implications of how terrible Dean’s depression was. Sam should have realized that Cas would have needed a bit more understanding of Dean’s psyche; the stuff that you can’t just pick up from looking at him. Sam felt a small surge of guilt, but he pushed it back. He needed to remain clear-headed in order to find Dean.

     “Cas,” Sam started, “is there any place I can meet up with you so we can find him?”

     Cas seemed to sober his mind. “Yes,” he stated, with a much stronger voice than before, “we should meet at The Hut. Do you need transportation?”

     Sam shook his head, but after a few beats of silence, he remembered that Cas couldn’t actually see him over the phone. “Oh! Sorry, but no, I don’t need a ride. I got a car. I should be there in a few hours.”

     “Thank you, Sam. See you then,” said Cas.

     No goodbyes were exchanged. Both sides of the call hung up and Sam immediately started dialing again. He dialed the animal shelter and the Italian restaurant and left a message on both saying he was going to need the day off tomorrow for personal reasons. After he finished the calls, he stuck his phone in his front pocket and grabbed his car keys. He already had a duffel bag in the trunk of his car fully packed for any purpose (force of habit). Getting into the driver’s seat, he turned on his little GPS and started driving up towards South Dakota.

 

 


	6. VI

     The car wasn't exactly Sam’s in the first place, but it did the job. Bobby had given him one of his fixed up old junkers on the condition that he didn’t turn it into scrap metal again. Sam had graciously agreed, without much of a worry for the conditions. Out of Dean, Cas, and Sam, Sam was definitely the best driver.

     But at this moment, nerve-wracked and anxiously driving down the highway in the rapidly darkening night, there were so many more opportunities for Sam to crash the car that all it did was make him more nervous. Plus, the worst bit was the fact that Sam was drastically screwing up his sleeping schedule by taking this late-night adventure. He was struggling to keep his eyes alert, and it was paining him to make sure he didn’t kill anybody, including himself, while rushing through the dark rural lanes. It would be a damn shame if he were to live a life full of saving people and hunting things and to die by crashing his car into a random cow.

     Sleep-starved and jittery was how Sam arrived at The Hut at around 11pm. Castiel was pacing the front porch when Sam pulled up, and abruptly stopped to- where’d he go?

     “Oh!” Sam jumped in surprise, as the angel popped up in the passenger seat of the car. Of course, teleportation was still a thing that happened. Sam had been so busy absorbing the domestic lifestyle that he’d temporarily forgotten that the supernatural existed. Oops.

     Even with his static deadpan expression, Cas sounded as urgent as Sam probably looked. “It’s good to see you, Sam. May we start driving now?” His voice sounded even more desperate in person than over the phone. It was unnerving to hear this being that belonged in positions of immeasurable power sound so weak and lost without his other half.

     Sam hoped that Cas wasn’t beating himself up over Dean’s abrupt meltdown, so he made sure to clarify everything this time. And he was sure not to let any big details slip again.

     “Cas- I hope you’re not blaming yourself for this.”

     Cas looked a bit like he’d like to correct Sam on that, but he let him say his explanation.

     “From what you said, it sound like Dean broke down the other night. Everything was bearing down on him, and his mind couldn’t comprehend all of the self-hatred that was going through it. Even though he has a lot of negativity in his past, life's been improved tenfold for him since you came along. See, I’m thinking that his day-to-day life was too smooth for his depression. He couldn’t find anything in his life at the time to be sad about, so he had to go back into his memories to find things to beat himself up for again. When he reopened those old wounds, it got to the point where it was too much to handle. He should have opened up to you more, but even so, I’m actually surprised at your ability to make him happy, Cas. Without you, he was so much worse off, and trust me, I can see how much happier he is inside when he’s with you. He won’t ever be totally cured from this, mostly because it’s part of himself. You can’t cure his soul, but why would you want to change him like that? Still, you helped him. What you _did_ do was make him see the better parts of himself, but it wasn’t enough because you couldn’t see how bad it was. I’m sorry for not warning you about it earlier; I figured you could cope. I don’t blame you though- depression is very unpredictable and you need help from others to keep it down. I should have been there for you both, and for that, I’m sorry. But you need to know- you’re the only thing that’s kept him together for so long. This is kinda my fault, but even without knowing the extent of Dean’s sadness, you still helped him in a few months more than I have in years. Just take all that into consideration. If you still blame yourself after all that, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

     With all those insane words reeling in his head, Cas had a lot of emotions to process. There’s shock in knowing the truth after an era of lies, and shock was what Cas was in. Ideally, he would take a long, quiet, _isolated_ time to contemplate the meanings of this, but this situation was anything but ideal. It took a few beats of silence for the most prevalent feeling in his head float to the top again- concern for Dean.

     “Thank you, Sam. Truly, it makes a difference to hear those words. But we still have to find Dean; it’s our most important goal at the moment, yes? I’ve already searched through the area within a close vicinity of the Hut, and there’s no sign of Dean in any of the nearby forests I’ve searched. When I saw that Dean wasn’t in or near The Hut, it occurred to me that I should call you. So I did.”

     Sam had some inkling of an idea of where Dean could have gone. “Cas, do you think that there’s any alcohol in the Hut?” Sam asked.

     “Well, we occasionally treat ourselves to beer, but at the moment I don’t think we have any in there. At least, not to the extent of my knowledge. I haven’t let Dean buy or consume any hard liquor for fear of potential consequences, such as a hangover. Having experienced the sensation myself, it’s not something I would wish upon Dean,” Cas replied, starting to get what Sam was implying. “Wait- are you saying that Dean’s only gone out for alcohol?”

     The younger brother could see that Cas was visibly relaxing at the thought. Though it was true that an alcoholic Dean was a better thing to find versus a dead (or worse) Dean, something was sticking out in Sam’s mind; a niggling little reminder of Dean’s past with alcohol that was refusing to be forgotten. Sam was going to have to ask the question anyways, just as a precaution.

     “About the other night,” Sam began, “was he crying? Dean, I mean.”

     “Yes, he was crying a lot. I believe he wouldn’t have wanted me to see him at a time when he thought he was weak, but even at his lowest points, he was always strong. No, he always _is._ ” Cas made a mental note to never again speak of Dean in the past tense.

     Barely taking the road in front of him, Sam’s mind was reeling. Dean had _cried._ Because of something negative. _In front of somebody else._ Adding up the results, Sam’s ‘oh shit’-o-meter went off. Gradually, almost subconsciously, he started adding pressure to the accelerator till the car was practically blurring down the smooth country roads.

     “What do you know about Dean’s drinking habits, Cas?” asked Sam. “Because when something makes Dean cry, nothing good happens because of it. The last time Dean cried in front of _me_ was directly preceding one of the largest drinking binges I’ve ever experienced of anyone. That night, I was designated driver, as usual, so I didn’t drink anything. I remember having to stop Dean from taking another shot before he choked on his own vomit. It was horrible. Without anyone to pull him back from his extremes, I’m scared for him and for whatever shit he’s gotten himself into this time. A happy Dean leads to being a happy drunk, but an emotional Dean is not going anywhere good.” Sam gulped, while the air in the car grew morbid and thick.

     Castiel’s short-lived stance of relaxation dissipated, immediately replaced by a straight-faced image of pure determination. “Where should we start, then?”

     Sam was really surprised by the level of intensity Cas had when talking about Dean; an intensity that had nothing to do with his angelic power. Sam would mention it later. Caught up in his thoughts, he didn’t realize that he was still being expectantly stared at by the angel for an answer till he noticed how silent it was. Snapping his thoughts back to the present, he started talking.

     “Yes! Where should we start? Well, first we should try to get ourselves out of the middle of nowhere to the nearest bit of modern civilization. Then, we can start looking for the bars and other places where you can get a drink that are still open at this ungodly hour of the night. Dean probably bee-lined it for one of those, if there are any. Do you have any ideas?”

     Cas sighed. “Sam: there are bars in this area of South Dakota like there are hairs on your head. Too many to count, and from you, they’re quite long,” Cas replied somewhat snarkily with a hint of exasperation.

     Sam was feeling a bit of pride for his coiffeur, but then the effect of the angel’s words sunk in. “Damn, you don’t have any specific places that would narrow it down a bit? Oh wait, I have an idea! There are two towns I got lost in when my GPS blanked out to get to the Hut. Do you think we should start with those?”

     Cas nodded. “Yes, that’s a good idea. Big Stone City and Ortonville are the two nearest to where we are, and As far as I know, there are a lot of drinking establishments available. We should make haste, Sam. If memory serves, most bars close at 4 in the morning. We may not be able to get through all the bars in both towns before they all close. True, they’re very close in vicinity, but going through every single place with alcohol is going to take a lot of time.”

     They drove through the rest of the fields that surrounded the Hut in silence and adrenaline. It was around 11:30 when they finally met the first glimpse of Big Stone City, South Dakota. It was dark and still as Sam and Cas drove along, worsening their worry for Dean every bit of road they crossed. When they saw their first bar to be open, they rushed through the doors without paying attention to the type of the bar. Which they really should have done.

     Upon setting foot in the establishment, they both knew they hadn’t reached the right bar. This was a club for women who like women, and the appearance of two men was quickly garnering attention from all the ladies in the crowded building.

     The two simultaneously turned and left quickly, but not so fast as to avoid hearing one of the women yell behind them, “The Chief’s Club is what y’all’re looking for, not the Charlie Day! It’s around the corner, sweethearts!”

     The statement was met with a round of laughter from the women, and as the embarrassed accidental visitors left, they mutually agreed that they would never speak of that incident again. From that moment onwards, they made sure to excruciatingly check what type of bar they were about to enter. Just to make sure.

     As they progressed through the other establishments in Big Stone City, their hope only brightened, refusing to dampen at their continual quest. Still, going through more and more of this town was having an effect on Sam- the adrenaline from earlier had dissipated, leaving him exhausted at the wheel. With a sigh, the tired driver realized he was going to need an artificial boost.

     Pulling over at the next Gas’n’Sip he saw, Sam mumbled something about needing a drink and stepped out of the car, only to find that Cas had teleported outside the car next to Sam, glaring at him.

     “What?” said Sam defensively.

     “‘A drink’? Really? Sam, this is _no_ time for ‘a drink.’ Have you forgotten why we’re out here in the first place?” Cas was starting to fume, and it would have been really scary if not for the fact that the raging had directly followed Cas’s use of his “air quotes.”

     Sam laughed. “Cas, I meant an _energy drink_! Yes, I remember why we’re here, and trust me, I want to find Dean too, but, Cas, man. I can’t keep driving if I’m asleep at the wheel! Let me just grab a 5-hour energy really quick. I hate putting that crap into my system, but-”

     Cas, who had been looking very exasperated, vanished and reappeared within the span of a second in almost exactly the same position. Except now he had a 5-hour energy drink in his outstretched hand. He walked back to his side of the car, dropping the small bottle into Sam’s hand as he went.

     The almost awestruck man took it like it was the elixir of life and downed the whole thing in only a few gulps. Already after a few seconds, he felt the energy flowing back into him in the form of flavored caffeine. He sat back down onto the driver’s seat and restarted the engine.

     “Cas,” he said, while Bobby’s old car purred its engine. “Did you even pay for that?”

     “No Sam, I did not. It’s a smudge on my conscience, but I’m pretty sure I can live with this,” Cas said, with a hint of sarcasm. “It’s not so large a stain of guilt that it outweighs the sin of letting Dean do this to himself,” he sighed resignedly.

     Sam was still frustrated that the angel refused to stop blaming himself completely, but still, he was impressed again, because like it always had been, Cas was always 100% devoted to Dean; having that quality accentuated in his absence was to be expected. There was a suspicion in Sam’s mind that Cas could (and probably would) go from petty theft to outright homicide if it somehow lead to them finding Dean quicker. The search was on.

 


	7. VII

     They’d searched through the entirety of the bars in Big Stone City, with no sign of Dean in any of them. There was two whole hours lost already, with the larger, more lively, Ortonville spread out before them on the mostly void, partially star-filled horizon. Both in the car were gradually succumbing to the acidic burn that so often accompanies anxiety for a loved one and the disintegrating of hope that stemmed from continual failure on a quest.

     The adjacent town was their new destination, and Cas nor Sam really wanted to consider the options of what could happen if they didn’t make it to Dean in time. Cas, especially, could feel his remaining optimism about that night’s search sifting away, like sand in a sieve. Still, he didn’t let Sam catch on to this accumulating emotional avalanche, not really positive why he was deciding to make his “face” more opaque than what would normally be appropriate for such a moment, aside from the benefits of not being seen as weak. The angel didn’t really know the full extent of it, but Dean had rubbed off on him in more ways than one.

     The state line into Minnesota was crossed, and the difference from South Dakota was barely distinguishable on the relatively smooth planes of the surrounding crop fields. Alone on the barely moonlit road was how the two passengers were travelling, but! The silence was broken! But of all the things that could strike a heart into speeding at a time like this, this was the one sound they would have least wanted to hear.

* * *

     The sound to penetrate the static night was a siren. The car stuttered to a halt. Flashing lights on a white vehicle were growing closer to the back of their own vehicle, with a raucous serenade attached. Those sounds could only belong to an ambulance.

     The ambulance was soon passing by on the right of the car heading to Ortonville as well, which gave Sam the dull reminder that he had been driving on the wrong side of the road (then again, it was empty and dark without proper headlights, and save for the ambulance it wouldn’t have been a problem, so you can’t blame him). But that was a small ping. There was a giant screaming exclamation that now filled Sam’s eyes and thoughts that quickly overtook the driving error.

     The only thing that the ambulance could be heading for was the same thing the other two Winchesters had been looking for, except the paramedics had an address. Sam sure would feel like a dumbass if he was following the emergency vehicle for the wrong reason, but he wouldn’t take the chance of losing it.

     It took less than a second for the car to start speeding after the ambulance. After Dean.

 

* * *

 

     The ambulance (closely followed by Bobby’s car) arrived at a sports bar named Kripke’s in the wee hours of the morning. Sam and Cas rushed out of their car and into the bar faster than any of the paramedics. There was a sight on the ground that greeted their eyes and brought shock to their hearts. It wasn’t anything either of them would have liked to have seen in their lifetimes.

     Lying, unconscious on the floor, was Dean Winchester. There was a wide, splattering pool of vomit in front of his blood-drained face, skin looking pale to the point of being blue. That was how they found Dean: like a corpse and on the ground, possibly dead because of reasons that could have been prevented had they found him sooner.

     Every sound in the vicinity stopped registering in Cas’s mind, dimmed beneath the deathly silence now replaced it. Voices making incomprehensible noise and urgent chattering started filtering back through, cancelling out the desperate scream forming in the back of the angel’s throat. Sam held Cas’s body back from behind as he struggled to get to Dean, to heal him, to apologize to him, to hold him and kiss him and tell him that he’d never stop loving him.

     The mouth of one of the paramedics was moving and words- words about Dean! - were making sense again- “... in the Bacchus maneuver position... pulse still going... irregular heartbeat... could choke on his own vomit, keep his airways open... alcohol poisoning... risking permanent brain damage... have to work fast... critical condition...”

     Castiel heard the words, the ones that made sense at least, and honestly, each word was like a shot to the gut. Time had frozen; everything was screaming now, with the lack of noise gone an overwhelming buzzing scratched against his eardrums, beating and pounding. Black feathers, tinged with red, dropped to the floor.

    _He had to save Dean! **Who was holding him back?**_

     Outside Cas’s meltdown, in the real world of rationality and suppressed emotions, life continued onwards. In favor of doing their jobs, the paramedics ignored the sight of the man resembling a moose struggling to keep the other man,  emotional and hyperventilating, from tearing off after the guy they were now loading into the gurney.

     Dean was in the ambulance now.

     The ambulance was driving away.

     Cas stopped fighting.

     The two outsiders walked into the parking lot.

     The angel sank to his knees.

     Sam lowered himself next to him.

     “Castiel, it’s not our choice whether or not to save him,” Sam whispered into the angel’s ear. “All we can do is let him heal for himself and let him choose. Give him the free will of choosing to continue or not. Trust me, I’m telling you this from experience. I just don’t want either of you to hurt more than you already do. Leave him be.”

     Upon hearing this, the emotions of the (ex?) lover took a lightning fast detour from desperate and anguished to desperate and _furious_.

     “How can you even _say_ that?” Cas growled as he turned around to look Sam in the face. “He could never regain consciousness again and you’re here telling me to ask him what he thinks before I can heal him? This is my fault in the first place, so why the _hell_ did I even call you? I could have flown everywhere and back in less than the time it took for you to drive to the Hut!”

     Sam was about to remind Cas that, when in an agitated state (especially when concerning Dean), he tended to forget about his angelic powers (to the dismay of Sam and Dean several times back when they all used to hunt together). That probably should have come up sooner, but he bit his tongue in favor of keeping it; Cas was fuming.

     “This is-” Cas sighed, rubbing the crease between his eyebrows. “This is my fault.  I shouldn’t have waited so long to check in on him in the first place. Can I at least fly us to the hospital to see him?” Resigned, Cas slumped his shoulders and stood up, offering his hand to Sam to help him up.

     Taking the hand offered to him, Sam replied, “Yeah Cas, that’s a good plan. Could you take the Impala and my car down there too?” The younger brother was as devastated and worried about Dean as Cas was but he was relieved that the angel was being a bit less emotional and getting his head cleared out.

     Cas nodded. In the blink of an eye, Kripke’s had two less visitors and two less cars on its premises.

* * *

 

     The second after apparating into the hospital’s waiting room, Cas could already feel the dank and stagnant scent of latex and medical supplies start to sink into his vessel’s trench coat. The cool and sterile look of the hospital seemed to have rubbed off on the staff in it too; the man sitting at the desk who was now talking to Sam had an icy blue aura about him and was making stern facial expressions. Cas didn’t like him.

     Castiel didn’t really understand much of what was going on here, but Sam had explained that this was what the healing facility looked like and that loved ones of those who were kept there had to  go through a certain process in order to visit. Cas, of course, knew what a hospital was and why they existed, but had never been in one himself. The way humanity had found the ways to fix their bodies were topics of much interest in Cas’s mind, but at this moment in time, all he cared about was making sure Dean was going to be okay.

     Sam had been talking to this man at the desk for almost ten minutes (his name was Hans, according to his nametag) and after signing in Dean with all the necessary information and asking the dude some questions, all he had gathered was that Dean was getting drained and that the process would take several hours at the very least. According to Hans, Dean would probably have to stay the night to make sure that he was able to function properly, and also to allow some time for any remaining alcohol to drain out of his system. Apparently, the official diagnosis was alcohol poisoning and that there was a risk for permanent brain damage, but that Dean was showing surprising levels of improvement, so there was a higher chance of total recovery. After telling Sam this, Hans followed monotonously with, “No visitors, guests, family or otherwise are permitted to be with the patient during treatment. Feel free to remain in the designated ‘Waiting Area’ until you are contacted and told otherwise.”

     By this point, Sam was looking pretty peeved off at this ‘Hans’ guy and was about to give him a piece of his mind, but then he realized a few things. First of all, it wasn’t the fault of the employee that these measurements were in place, and secondly, it was almost past four in the morning and an outburst in the static environment of a sleepy hospital would not be greatly appreciated.

     Sam sat down next to Cas in one of the dark teal seats provided. The fluorescent lights above made skin look waxy and corpse-like; Sam kept his eyes away from his hands.

     At the insistent look Cas was giving him, Sam recounted the information that Hans had given him. Upon hearing that Dean wasn’t going to die, Cas let out a gust of air and let his head drop to his chest. He could rest. Without even realizing it, his breathing slowed and his eyes closed. Castiel was asleep. The bullet wounds in the wings began their healing process.

     Sam chuckled feebly; all his will to stay awake drained away. There was no harm in catching some Z’s, right? It was curious how the last thoughts in his mind before drifting off were intellectual ones: how could an angel, presumably at full power, fall asleep so naturally? The niggling question dissolved itself as Sam fell asleep himself.

 


	8. VIII

     When Cas woke up around 8 in the morning, he approached the unfamiliar woman with the warm purple aura now sitting at the desk (apparently named Erika) and asked her if Dean Winchester was available for visiting. She was much nicer than Hans before her and asked Cas to wait just a moment before sending up a message to Dean’s treatment room. While waiting, Cas turned and looked at Sam, who was still sleeping soundly in his chair, head lolling uncomfortably on his right shoulder.

     The waiting room was a bit more occupied than the night before. At this time, people were already streaming in to visit their own loved ones. A small line was growing behind Cas as he waited for Erika, all of whom seemed to be all over the range of human emotion. Some of the visitors were looking downright heartbroken, while others seemed content, holding balloons and other gifts for someone in the stages of recovery. There were children who looked bored or confused, parents with nervous faces gripping the shoulders of their infirm children, and hopeful yet teary-eyed looking elderly folks waiting to see their spouses.

     The spectrum of humanity was spread out in a single room, united, not just by their relationship to others, but also by the way their bodies failed them. The universal weakness of their species- bodies aren’t always the way they’re supposed to be, and Castiel had found that out from a second-hand experience. Inhabiting Jimmy Novak’s body was an enlightening way to live through life.

     Castiel experienced the 5 senses in a way that (he assumed) was different than that average earthly organism did. It all felt detached, though this was to be expected. He was _literally_ walking the earth in another man’s shoes. Seeing things through his eyes, hearing things through his ears. In the start, it was a very jarring transition. Going from having no definite form to inhabiting a living, human body- it took some getting used to, to say the least. However, having his celestial powers manifest themselves among the Earth was instrumental in helping him keep his balance.

     The vessel was the only experience Castiel had with human bodies and their functions, but really it was more of a static snapshot of what a human body was like, versus being born into one. But as time went by, Jimmy’s body evolved to Cas’s spirit, or perhaps it was the opposite. Either way, the two became closer to one, especially during the time when Cas had been with Dean. Castiel wasn’t inside the vessel, they were a single being. Cas had won his humanity.

     This was probably the reason he had fallen asleep in the waiting room the previous night. Sam, meanwhile, was still drifting off, undisturbed by the presence of others in the room. When Erika told Cas that Dean was available to visit in room 221 on floor 2, in the third door on the right of the elevator, he wasted no time thanking her and immediately ran off towards the elevators. He would have flown, but he was becoming more aware of how humans viewed teleportation. He’d tried to do it less in the presence of other humans ever since he’d found out a man had gotten a heart attack after seeing him suddenly disappear.

     He ran down the hall after he got to floor 2 and stopped right before entering the room. The angel took an unnecessary deep breath and walked through the door.

* * *

 

     “Hello, Dean.”

     A sigh from a recovering mouth. “Hey, Cas.

     You came back for me, didn’t you.”

     Footsteps, coming closer. “When have I not?”

     A resigned snort. “You have a point.”

     “I love you.” He slipped.

     Silence.

     “That’s all?” Curiosity.

     Confusion. “What do you mean?”

     The atmosphere breaks.

     “Well, Cas, I was expecting a lecture or something. I fucking gave myself alcohol poisoning, and all I get is an ‘I love you’? We’ve got some shit to talk about.” The last bit came out quickly but determinately, as though it took a lot of courage to muster out. It probably did.

     “It’s true though. I _do_ love you- more than all the stars in the sky. I just thought you could use a reminder every once in a while.” Castiel chuckled.

     Dean’s entire aura, grayened by his infirmity, brightened by the tiniest fraction at hearing these words. But not too much. It was almost like it was hesitant to hope, worried to expect too much. Cas hoped to bring it back to the full brightness that it used to be.

     “Oh. I thought- well, I was so stupid, I kicked you out, I made so many mistakes- how do you still love me? I don’t deserve you. You’re _an angel of the fucking lord_ , for fuck’s sake! Why-”

     Of all the ramblings to be interrupted by a kiss, this would be the best one of them all.

     Words born from love, waiting to be whispered into an open ear, made their entrance into existence: “Dean Winchester, you are _not_ the burnt and broken shell of a man I believed you to be.”

* * *

 

     The bloodied wings were still healing their feathers. The rusty armor was still worn and unstable. Yet somehow, the two manage to support each other to the point where they can both fly.

     We’re not saying that they lived a happily ever after, because in what story is that true? No, Dean and Castiel lived together in love for the rest of their lives, and that’s what’s important.

     The wings found their place on the armor, and the armor had a place to support the wings. And together they flew away.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thankful for 1000 hits, everyone! This means so much!  
> Kudos make my heart smile, and comments make my heart melt. Feedback would be appreciated!  
> Thanks for reading.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Art] Rusting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2421203) by [Nonexistenz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonexistenz/pseuds/Nonexistenz)




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